Why must the raspberrypi be so proprietary? I think this is especially unacceptable for a device that is intended for ed

[Rajjones]

I have started doing operating system development for the raspberrypi and was surprised at the secretiveness. So far I noticed the GPU instruction set is a proprietary secret as well as the bootloader and other firmware.

I guess students will end up writing python and BASIC ????? programs for which they don't need a raspberrypi. Those who want to study how software works deeper down are largely prohibited from doing so on this platform.

[middings]

Rajjones, consider making your complaints to the Raspberry Pi people directly.

By searching the Internet and following promising links I discovered that the source code for the Raspberry Pi GPU boot code includes this statement: "Copyright (c) 2006, Broadcom Corporation." From that, I conclude that the Raspberry Pi people are not in the business of silicon chip design nor microcode programming. They designed their products for use by people who intend to make a computerized gadget as a hobby or school project, not for the tiny number of people with the skill and interest to hack microcode.

[binarymaster]

Open source UEFI bootloader for Raspberry Pi does exists, it may help: https://github.com/andreiw/RaspberryPiPkg